At the same time the Latin Church underwent a similar process of transformation.

The Papacy became more autocratic.

Like the king, the Pope began to say, 'L'Eglise c'est moi.' This merging of the mediaeval State and mediaeval Church in the personal supremacy of King and Pope may be termed the special feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded the Renaissance.

It was thus that the necessary conditions and external circumstances were prepared.

The organization of the five great nations, and the leveling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still evolving in the establishment of the democratic idea.
Meanwhile, it must not be imagined that the Renaissance burst suddenly upon the world in the fifteenth century without premonitory symptoms.
Far from that: within the middle age itself, over and over again, the reason strove to break loose from its fetters.